LAW ENFORCEMENT, COMMUNITY WORK TO FIGHT DRUGS

Although a concerted effort among law enforcement agencies to eradicate illegal drugs from the city has proven successful, it is obvious from the city's 1993 year-end crime report that far too much drug dealing and usage continues in Cape Girardeau. The city and area continue to suffer from the effects of drug violations and violent crime that often is linked to drug dealing and usage.

We applaud the Cape Girardeau Police Department and other law enforcement agencies for their crackdown on drugs in the city. It appears the drug dealing that went on for so long on the streets in parts of South Cape Girardeau has been significantly reduced as a result of a huge undercover investigation by a joint-agency Southeast Missouri Drug Task Force that made dozens of arrests in 1992. At the least, dealers and buyers no longer are conducting their business in wide-open view on public streets.

The 1993 crime report figures show that the effort continued last year. In 1992, when the task force investigation brought about those dozens of arrests, a total of 156 narcotics arrests were made in Cape Girardeau. Without the task force, but instead a newly-formed group of city police officers who make up the Narcotics Enforcement Unit, police still made 163 narcotics arrests last year. The fact that more arrests were made last year than the year before shows that the drug problem remains serious in Cape Girardeau.

Police Chief Howard Boyd Jr.'s department is in the process of establishing a community policing program, which would directly link police representatives and the community in an effort to solve some of the problems plaguing certain sections of the city. He says it will be a tailor-made program for Cape Girardeau that will get more people involved with the department, bringing the citizenry and department closer together. At the same time he wants to put more officers on the streets. Once the community policing program is established, he hopes to accomplish that.

Both moves will be good ones.

Getting the community involved will help strengthen public support of the department. By working closer with police, community members will become involved in the war on drugs and other crime that police must deal with daily.

Boyd says he has been told by patrolmen that there is a need for more officers on the streets. Putting more officers on the streets increases police visibility, long known to be one of the best deterrents to crime, particularly if they concentrate on areas of high-crime incidence. The recent hirings of five officers, bringing the department's strength to 58, is a step in the right direction. Bringing the department up to its full commissioned strength of 65 officers would be the best way to accomplish higher visibility, although there are no plans to hire seven more officers.

With bills pending in Congress that would build new prisons, fund boot camps for young offenders, put 100,000 more police officers on the streets, increase the penalties for dealing drugs near schools and set stiffer, minimum sentences for crimes with guns, additional help appears to be on the way in the fight against crime. Enactment of those measures coupled with more community involvement in the police department and more officers on the streets, would go a long way in the Cape Girardeau Police Department's fight against crime.